smalyshev

$foo = $_POST['barf'] does not copy data.

Unfortunately, these tips were written by somebody who does not understand how PHP works. See detailed critique of the previous version here: https://php100.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/php-performance-goog... The article may have changed since then but some of the points are still valid. It also doesn't mention current stable version of PHP (5.3) and still has no mention of bytecode caching. At least it mentions profiling now...

Both versions of the code do exactly the same: 1. Take description from memory 2. Allocate string and put the stripped version there 3. Output the string (here you might save if you don't use output buffering since no copying to the buffer happens but just output) 4. Release the memory allocated in 2.